Great forum---just bought 89GL-1500 a month ago ( Too cold to ride ) & wondering if I can handle it !!! I haven't rode a motorcycle in 35 years ( i'm 72 ) Have put a lot of miles on BMWs when I was younger and just recently got the bug ! Just love the look of Goldwings so bought one. Do you guys think I can handle it ???

Take easy until you get the grove back and you will be fine. Try not to push it until you are comfortable. Also don't let any one push you. The wings have very low centers of gravity.Every spring it takes me a few miles to get back into the grove so to speak.

And welcome also........we need pic's because if we can't see it it don't exist

Welcome to the club, just take your time getting back into the saddle and I am sure you will be fine, the wing is a heavy bike, but the weight is down low so it's quite easy to handle.. Just find some quiet roads to start on so you can get the hang of the bike and a feel for its handling and then go ride.. You need to post some pics, it's an unwritten rule of this club!

Not trying to scare you but the 1500 is a very heavy bike and is not that easy to handle at low speeds, as in 10 mph or less especially when trying to turn. Even stopped if you lean too far it will go down because of it's weight. That said, with practice you will be able to handle it with ease. I suggest you take it to a parking lot and practice slow speed maneuvers. Learn how to feather the engine speed with the clutch and or rear brake. Then learn how to pick it up by yourself which isn't hard once you learn how. You "will" dump it sooner or later. Everyone does. I dumped mine twice in the first week. Once you master the basics you will love the 1500. Check out this vid.

Tom

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

dingdong wrote:Not trying to scare you but the 1500 is a very heavy bike and is not that easy to handle at low speeds, as in 10 mph or less especially when trying to turn. Even stopped if you lean too far it will go down because of it's weight. That said, with practice you will be able to handle it with ease. I suggest you take it to a parking lot and practice slow speed maneuvers. Learn how to feather the engine speed with the clutch and or rear brake. Then learn how to pick it up by yourself which isn't hard once you learn how. You "will" dump it sooner or later. Everyone does. I dumped mine twice in the first week. Once you master the basics you will love the 1500.

That is good advice. One thing I learned is that if you are in the position where the bike is going to go down when stopped or going slowly, don't hurt yourself (and you will hurt yourself if you try) attempting to keep it up. You won't be able to - it's too heavy. Let it go down and concentrate on getting off safely.

The 1500 is only 150 or so lbs heavier than my 1100, but it is much more difficult to handle at low speeds, specially in turns. If you come to a stop with the front wheel turned, chances are the bike will be going down. I haven't dropped my 1500 yet, but I've come close a couple of times. I spent some time in parking lots doing slow speed turns, and I need to do some more once the weather improves.

My name is Eduardo and I am from Guatemala in Central America,
yes new member and new Goldwing Owner. I have purchased a 1978 Honda Goldwing that will get the 28th January.
I grew up with my Father having a 1976 Goldwing and now I want mine hehehe.
Just wanted to say hi and tell all that Goldwings in my Country are a hit.
See ya all arround.

Welcome to the club both of you new guys. Zubby, a practice I did was in a parking lot I used traffic cones but you can use anything soft, start riding figure 8s at maybe 30 feet apart. noy trying for speed, but for controlat low speed. when you feel good with that, move the cones 5 ft closer together.Keep this up untilthe cones are double the length of the bike. then you know you are good.Drive safe, be careful out there but have fun.

Thanks bustedwing--I can't wait till the Ohio weather starts to look like Georgia weather! I just want to run this thing through the gears as I have only done that one time !! When I bought the bike, the weather was pretty foul ( cold-rain ) so my test ride was pretty short. Upon reading the posts in the forum, I learned that early 1500s had a problem with trans. ( bent shifter fork ) Now I'm wondering if everything " down there" functions properly ! I guess I'm just anxious to get on and give it a good test ride !!!

I have owned three Gold wings, a 1200, and this is my 2nd 1500. The 1200 had 40,000 and both of the 1500 s less than 20,000 . The first 1500 had 38,000 when I had an accident, and never had a single glitch with any of them with shifting, with the exception of when I converted the trike I have now to the heel-toe shifter. It took a little time to get ti adjusted right because of the trike kit.But as long as you keep up on the maint ad clutch adjustment, and watch the shift from a dead stop, that will tell you a lot.If it creeps or grinds a lot from neutral, check it over as soon as possible.Thats where you get bent forks and metal shavings in the oil, no good.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.Frank Zappa

Now,now HyperPete--we were talking about bikes and I was referring to the tranny ( and thanks to good health everything else works just fine ) !!! And Bustedwing, thanks for the tips, I'll have to look into clutch adjustments--I know nothing about that yet. And that brings up another point that I've been pondering--everyone talks about how fine a machine the Goldwing is, but, there are a whole bunch of posts of problems that owners are having ????? I've owned two Beemers and I can honestly say I had absolutely not one problem with. ( couple trips to Wyoming (from Ohio)couple to Canada, and one to Greenland ) !!!!

Once in awhile you do have to do some kind of preventative maintenence, and the best thing about this group is , for instance, if you would like to change your bulbs to LED there is a guy that has taken the time to take pictures, explain each step in easy to understand laymans language, and then post it here so if you run into that you have a library to study before you tackle the job. How much more can you ask for? These guys are great.

Oh yes- I realize these are really good people and a lot of great information is available on this forum,but, I'm new to this forum and I've been spending a lot of time reading to learn all I can about my Wing, and,I get to wondering if there are more hours spent working on them than riding on them !!!!!! ( I sure hope not ) I hope I'm not sounding too negative but there sure are a lot of troubles posted here.

zubby wrote:Oh yes- I realize these are really good people and a lot of great information is available on this forum,but, I'm new to this forum and I've been spending a lot of time reading to learn all I can about my Wing, and,I get to wondering if there are more hours spent working on them than riding on them !!!!!! ( I sure hope not ) I hope I'm not sounding too negative but there sure are a lot of troubles posted here.

You have to understand something about forums like this. People rarely come to online forums to say, "hey, my bike is running great! I haven't had any problems in years!" The main reason they come to these types of forums is BECAUSE they have a problem that they're trying to resolve. So people with problems are over-represented in forums. If you read online forums to try to get an idea of how reliable a specific type of vehicle is, you're going to get a skewed picture.

I'll say it right now: I haven't had a single problem with my 1100 in years. I've done maintenance to it, but other than things like new tires, fluid/filter changes, and that sort of thing, I haven't had to actually "fix" something in a very long time. That's pretty impressive for a 30 year old motorcycle.

If you look back at the history of the bikes that are having problems you will usually see that the bike was recently purchased and had not been run for a few years (20 years in my case). That causes a lot of things to gunk up and it takes a while to clean it back up and get it running correctly again. There is also the fact that a problem can have multiple causes so it takes a while to go through and pinpoint what is causing a problem making for multiple threads troubleshooting the different areas. Let's not mention that some of us (me) are doing a lot of these repairs ourselves and have not done it before so we start, then partway through something does not look right so we stop and post questions to make sure it is being done correctly so we can get it right the first time. Also there are those who rush through a problem only to find out that they missed a step and have to take the bike apart again to fix what they missed (me again).

This site has a wealth of information that has helped me to get things working on my bike that would have had to wait a couple months for me to save enough money to take it to the shop.

zubby wrote:Oh yes- I realize these are really good people and a lot of great information is available on this forum,but, I'm new to this forum and I've been spending a lot of time reading to learn all I can about my Wing, and,I get to wondering if there are more hours spent working on them than riding on them !!!!!! ( I sure hope not ) I hope I'm not sounding too negative but there sure are a lot of troubles posted here.

Okay my 1993 GL1500A with a Voyager unit runs great and I do the maintenance myself only cause I just don't trust anyone to do the job right. As the second owner I've replaced the alternator (original one quit working) with a Compufire, put new Progressive air shocks on the rear, changed the clutch and brake fluid, oil changes and the only time it will see a shop is for tires. Alternators and shocks are things that can go bad over time.
Take care of a Goldwing and it will reward you with many trouble free years of operation.

Wow---didn't mean to get you folks stirred up, sorry. I'm a Goldwing owner now so, I'll stick to listening to you experienced owners to teach me how to pamper my new family member ! I'll be sure to keep you posted on how much fun I'm having----thanks !